Human 5-hydroxytryptamine 7 (5-HT 7 ) receptors display characteristics shared with receptors believed to form a tight physical coupling with G protein in the absence of ligand. Some receptors apparently preassociated with G i/o and G q/11 are reported to inhibit the signaling of other similarly coupled G protein-coupled receptors by limiting their access to activate a common G protein pool. Therefore, we determined whether 5-HT 7 receptor expression was sufficient to limit signaling of endogenously expressed G s -coupled receptors in human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cells. Using the ecdysone-inducible expression system, which allows for the titration of increasing receptor density in the same clonal cell line, we compared the effects of 5-HT 4(b) and 5-HT 7(a,b,d) receptor expression on adenylyl cyclase (AC) stimulation by the endogenous G s -coupled -adrenergic (AR) and prostanoid EP (EPR) receptors. AR-and EPR-stimulated AC activity was attenuated by 5-HT 7 receptor expression in both membrane preparations and intact HEK293 cells. AR-and EPR-stimulated AC activity was unaffected by expression of the G s -coupled 5-HT 4 receptor. The mechanism of this heterologous desensitization seems independent of protein kinase A activation, nor does it occur at the level of G protein activation because 1) AR-and EPR-stimulated AC activity was not restored to control values when G␣ s was overexpressed; and 2)  1 AR and  2 AR activation of G␣ s was unaffected by the expression of 5-HT 7 receptors. In addition, overexpression of AC isoforms was unable to rescue AR-and EPR-stimulated AC activity. Therefore, 5-HT 7 receptors probably limit access and/or impede activation of AC by AR and EP receptors. Although the 5-HT 7 receptor may preassociate with G protein and/or AC, the mechanism of this heterologous desensitization remains elusive.Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) mediates its diverse physiological effects through at least 14 different receptor subtypes, of which 13 belong to the G protein-coupled receptor family (Hoyer et al., 1994). Among the human 5-HT receptors, three different subtypes, 5-HT 4 , 5-HT 6 , and 5-HT 7 , are coupled to G s and at least the 5-HT 4 and 5-HT 7 receptors are expressed as several different functional splice variants (Gerald et al., 1995;Heidmann et al., 1997). The functional significance of 5-HT 7 splice variants, which differ only in the carboxyl terminus (Heidmann et al., 1997), remains unknown (Krobert et al., 2001Krobert and Levy, 2002), whereas among the 5-HT 4 splice variants, constitutive activation of AC is dependent on the different carboxyl termini (Bockaert et al., 2004). We have shown previously that the 5-HT 4(b) and 5-HT 7(a) signaling properties differ fundamentally. The potency of 5-HT to stimulate AC increased with increasing receptor density in clones expressing 5-HT 4(b) but not 5-HT 7(a) receptors, even though 5-HT-stimulated AC activity in clones expressing 5-HT 7(a) receptors had reached asymptotic levels (Bruheim et al., 2003). This indicates that...